Many people in the United States, and around the world, are currently interested in reducing the amount of food they eat each day. One form of eating behavior exhibited by many of these people, between-meal eating, is particularly difficult to control. Suppression of between-meal eating is made all the more difficult by ready access to food, especially food which requires little or no preparation and is kept in refrigerators or cupboards.
While it is possible to lock or otherwise reduce the convenience of the accessibility of food to decrease between-meal eating, such approaches are unnecessarily burdensome on those members of a household who are not attempting to reduce food intake or who might keep hours other than those kept by the person attempting to reduce food intake.
It is desirable, therefore, to have an apparatus which can provide sufficient psychological discouragement to a person wishing to reduce food intake while not unduly inconveniencing other members of a household or denying the person access to food at usual eating hours.